


Soigne

by aykayem



Series: Fifty-two words [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 03:36:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1115007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aykayem/pseuds/aykayem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One thing that Draco Malfoy had never been was ungainly. It was as though Draco had been put together with the utmost care, like every bit of him had been polished and tended to by someone who truly adored their work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soigne

  
_soigné_  
(adj.) possessing an aura of sophistication in dress, manner, or design; presented or prepared with an elegance attained through care for the finer details

One thing that Draco Malfoy had never been was ungainly. Even in his gawky teenage years, he had a certain level of grace and charm and wit that had made him endearing to just enough people that he had never been alone, not from the moment he woke up in the morning to the moment he closed his eyes at night. It was as though he had been put together with the utmost care, like every bit of him had been polished and tended to by someone who truly adored their work - like he was a doll meant not for play, but to be set upon a shelf and admired until people came by to ooh and aah. 

Of course he had his tatters around the edges; it was impossible not to by the time they all graduated from school. They had all been battered, tossed around and abused until their limits had been pushed, and they had all come out of it on the other side relatively unscathed. Draco was, perhaps, more scathed than most, but that didn't stop him from retaining something that made him inherently _him_. He was still all long limbs and grace, all lifted chins and upturned noses and half-lidded lashes as he regarded everyone around him. Now it was to keep himself in, instead of keeping everyone else out. A small distinction, but one that ought to be made all the same.

Theodore Nott (the younger) had never really tried to emulate that, not consciously. He had always wanted it, certainly, but perhaps not for himself: he wanted to be the possessor of such beauty, he wanted to be the one to meticulously care for that smooth, polished skin. He wanted to be the one to take that doll down from its shelf and carefully brush the dust from flawless porcelain. It was a realisation that set in when he saw the first signs of cracking during the war, when he had watched Draco try and stitch together elements of grace and elegance from ragged shreds of what once was, clambering for some notion of what he was before when they both knew that it wasn't going to happen.

But they _had_ come out unscathed. Draco _had_ been able to stitch together those elements of grace again, donning them and smoothing them back out like a tailored suit over his now too-skinny frame. They were war-torn and bloodied, but still Draco Malfoy held his chin up high, eyes averted high above the heads of all of those who used to be his classmates. It was the same act as before, but things had changed: no longer did he avoid the eyes of his peers because they weren't good enough; now it was he who wasn't good enough. It was he who clung to what once was, those ragged pieces of the past that had built him up and given him the confidence that had driven him as a child. Everyone else had moved beyond to something else, and still, he held the dregs of sophistication in his teacup, as though they foretold his future instead of his past.

He was a shattered thing now, a being half-there and half-gone. Where the other half was, no one seemed to know, but Theo hoped that the more he watched in silence, the better a chance he had at guessing. Perhaps the most obvious thing he had learned from those day-in, day-outs of quiet objective observation - rather than the subjective he was already so good at - was that Draco was still nowhere near ungainly. He stumbled and tripped, but it was never the type of thing that was perceptible; it passed over the heads of most, under the radar of the rest. To the untrained eye, Draco Malfoy hadn't gone through anything more than a hangnail, perhaps. Or maybe it was a stubbed toe. A snag along the hem of his sweater, or a scuff on his pristine leather shoes. To the rest of the world, he was just as put-together as he'd ever been. But to Theo Nott, the cracks shone through, and he was even more perfect than he'd been before.


End file.
